Music

6:18 pm

Wed October 30, 2013

WCBE presents Derek Vincent Smith AKA Pretty Lights at The LC on Wednesday, November 6th! Self described as Electrohiphopsoul, Pretty Lights is out on tour with the brand new release A Color Map Of The Sun and is making a stop in Columbus!

Singer, songwriter and guitarist Rokia Traoré has always been a sophisticate. She grew up as the daughter of a diplomat who was posted in the U.S., Europe and the Middle East. Her most recent stage project was Desdemona, a critically acclaimed theater piece riffing on Shakespeare's Othello, done in collaboration with novelist Toni Morrison and renowned theater director Peter Sellars and mounted at London's Barbican, in Vienna and at Lincoln Center.

There's an element of Gregory Porter's singing that feels like a welcome throwback, though he doesn't spell it out precisely. It's in the way he leans heavily into and erupts "Hey!" without fear of coming up short. It's in his coat-and-tie handling of an audience, well-mannered but without quaint mannerisms. It's in one of his better-known songs, where he asks "1960 what? 1960 who?" without a distinct answer — just a suggestion of the decade's historic events, alert black community and cathartic swing.

Lou Barlow has been reuniting with old bandmates left and right in the last decade or so, even as his personal life has broken apart. In 2005, the rock veteran rejoined Dinosaur Jr., having long since moved past the acrimony surrounding his departure, and he's now back with Sebadoh for the first time since the turn of the century.

The new documentary Muscle Shoals recalls how interracial harmony in tumultuous times made possible a new kind of music. Leading African-American artists traveled to North Alabama — not exactly a place they thought they'd be welcome in the civil rights era — to jam with an all-white crew of session players. In little rooms near the wide Tennessee River, they perfected soul and anticipated Southern rock.